by B. T. Narro
“Made you forget?”
“Yes! Everything’s making sense now. Before I left, I had the unbidden urge to check on the contents of my lockbox. Then I forgot to lock the door.” He threw up his hands with his revelation. “It was a psychic watching me. Or if they were strong enough, they didn’t even need to watch!” He hopped as he jabbed his finger at his back wall. “They were hidden outside and sensed where I went to retrieve my key.”
“Psychics can do that?”
“Certainly yes, and the stronger the psychic, the easier it is to detect the person’s exact location.” He ran to the other side of the room and pointed at his front door. “They distracted my mind with the need to rush out of the house as if I was late, thus forgetting to lock the door. Then they entered and searched for my key. There was no way for them to lock the door on their way out, but they obviously didn’t want me to know they’d come in and taken anything, so they replaced the bracelet with one nearly identical.” He huffed. “They must’ve already known what the bracelet looked like to have a replacement prepared. This is someone who knows more than they should. Come, we must tell Terren.”
Basen ran out of the house with Jack, figuring Terren had to be asleep along with everyone else at the Academy by then. But until the murderer was caught, everyone was in danger. It was worth waking up the headmaster.
“Whoever took the stone was probably the same psychic that killed Nick,” Basen said.
“Correct. If we find the bracelet in someone’s possession, we can infer they are the murderer or at least obtained it from the murderer.”
“Is it possible to use one stone to find another?”
“If a mage is powerful enough, like yourself, then yes, in theory. But I’ve never heard of it being done, or anything related to portals for that matter.” Jack laughed and slapped Basen’s back. “Alabell was right to send you to me! We’re finally making progress. You don’t know how it’s been for Terren and the rest of us to feel as if we can’t guarantee our students’ safety.” He seemed to be growing more excited as he spoke, shaking his finger as he pointed it. “You are something remarkable. We’re going to be spending much more time together.”
“Thank you, sir, however I don’t believe I should be making any more portals until we find the murderer. Right now, whoever killed Nick thinks they put an end to the making of portals. To cast more could result in another attack.”
“Yes, we’ll be discreet when we meet about portals. Only Terren needs to know for now.”
It sounded like Jack was only half agreeing; that his desire to see Basen make portals was too strong to squelch. Basen wouldn’t pry for now, but there was one thing he needed to confirm.
“So it seems likely that whoever is out there with the stone is the most powerful psychic in history.”
“Yes, which is why we really need to be careful with this information. Don’t tell anyone.” Jack stopped and grabbed Basen’s shoulder. “Does Alabell know not to mention it?”
“I believe so.”
“I’ll send a letter tomorrow, because we need to be sure.”
Basen trusted Jack would know better than he would that there was no risk of the letter being read by unintended eyes, though it was still an effort not to voice his concern.
Jack seemed to see something and extended his hand across Basen’s chest to stop him. “Quiet.”
There were many houses in front of them, but the one in the absolute corner of the campus, with the northern and western walls of the Academy close behind it, had its door open. No light was on. Was this the headmaster’s house?
Jack crept toward it, Basen staying close at his side with his wand ready. But then the chemist pushed Basen behind him protectively, and that’s where Basen reluctantly stayed until they came to the door.
“Terren?” Jack called out cautiously. There was no response. “Basen, light.”
As the entrance room came under the glow of bastial energy, it immediately became apparent there had been a brawl. Furniture was thrown and broken. A dagger lay in the midst, though it was unlike the one used to kill Nick. Blood smeared the ground and trailed toward them. Basen aimed his wand down at it to see that the blood thinned as it went between his feet and out the door.
“Terren!” Jack called loudly now.
Basen followed him deeper into the house. They checked every room, which took only a moment. It appeared that the struggle began in the headmaster’s bedroom. There was no blood, yet his sheets were strewn about and a bookcase had toppled over.
“He’s not here,” Basen said. There was some consolation in the thought that Terren was probably too large to be carried off after being killed.
Unless it was more than one man. Basen shuddered.
Jack spun and grabbed his shoulder. “We need to alert the guards.”
“You do that, and I’ll follow the trail of blood.”
“Stay with me to be safe!”
“I might be able to catch whoever did this.” And whoever did the same to Nick.
“No!”
“Sorry.” He ran as Jack shouted for him to come back.
CHAPTER TWENTY
A crash awoke Cleve. Did someone just kick down his front door? He jumped out of bed and grabbed his bastial steel sword as Reela sat up. She held up their blanket to cover her naked body, but Cleve didn’t bother with clothes. He was already out the door and running down the hall.
“Reela!” a voice screamed from the front of the house. “Reela!”
Cleve’s other roommates were coming out of their rooms and into the narrow hallway as he ran by. Barely avoiding colliding with them, Cleve recognized the voice just before he saw his uncle carrying a body into his kitchen.
“What is this?” Cleve asked, his chest pounding.
“Reela!” Terren yelled again, ignoring Cleve. “Get out here now!” He set down what appeared to be a dead man dressed all in black, a long hood bunched around his shoulders.
Reela, wearing just their bed sheet, hurried in. Behind her, Steffen and Effie stumbled into the wide common area at the front of the house. Cleve acutely became aware he was stark naked and his front door was open. Realizing no one seemed to be in danger, he retrieved a cleaning cloth from the kitchen counter to hold in front of his manhood. It was just long enough to cover him.
“What is it?” Reela asked Terren, rubbing one eye.
“Question this man right now! I need to know who sent him!”
Clutching the white sheet that barely covered her ample breasts, she waddled to the table as quickly as she could. Cleve stood beside her, looking down at a man he’d never seen before sprawled on his table.
His hair was short and black, his nose long and bloody, probably broken. He seemed to be around thirty and large enough that not many men besides Terren could’ve carried him more than a few feet. But if he’d attacked Terren in his house, then the headmaster had carried him nearly a mile. Reela tried to keep the drooping bed sheet up with one hand as she held the other over the man’s face.
“Who sent you?”
There was no reply.
“Answer, dammit!” Terren pounded the table and startled Reela in the process. She fumbled her grip of the bed sheet and it fell off her shoulder, exposing one of her breasts. She quickly pulled it back up with both hands.
“Terren, he’s unconscious or dead!” she squealed, clearly more worried about her nakedness than the man.
“No, he can’t be!”
“He is.”
Effie came up from behind Reela and wrapped a blanket around her shoulders.
“Thanks, Eff.”
Cleve looked to Steffen on the other side of the table, wondering if he’d thought to bring anything for him. Steffen seemed oblivious as he stood there blinking with an unreadable expression, leaving Cleve with the small cloth that did no better than his hand at covering himself. A cold breeze came in and licked his bare behind.
“At least go shut the door, Steffen,” he said sharp
ly.
“Oh.”
Terren had his ear over the man in black, apparently listening for breath. He pushed his ear against the man’s bloody chest next.
“You bastard, you die too easily!” He pounded the table again. “Live, dammit!”
An awkward moment of silence passed as they watched Terren slowly give up.
“Terren, what happened?” Cleve asked, too curious to retrieve any clothing just yet, moving so that his ass was pointed toward the back wall.
“This man was in my house, waiting for me to fall asleep so he could kill me. He’s a damn strong psychic as well and almost had me pinned from pain even after all my training to resist it. But I managed to resist the spell enough to get my sword. We fought, and soon he was trying to run while fending me off with his dagger. I stabbed him in the chest in hopes of subduing him and then carried him here as quickly as I could. He must’ve died on the way.” Terren stripped the body as he spoke, checking the pockets but finding nothing.
“Was his dagger silver like the one found before?” Effie asked.
“No. It should be back in my house.” He gritted his teeth and pressed his fist against the table. “Damn bastard. We need to know who sent him.”
“Terren…” Reela swallowed audibly. “Someone sent an assassin after the headmaster of the Academy. What could this mean?”
“Best case, someone wants me dead for reasons that aren’t political. Worse case, and the most probable, we’re looking at the beginning of another war.”
“No!” Effie shook her head as a tear rolled down her cheek. “Not another war.”
Reela glared at Steffen. “Dammit, will you give her a hug? Cleve and I don’t have any free arms.”
“Oh.” Steffen threw his arms around Effie. She put her face on his shoulder and squeezed him fiercely.
Someone tried the handle of their door, freezing all of them.
“Steffen,” Cleve whispered, “did you lock it?”
“No,” he whispered back.
A hush fell over the room as the door cracked open. Cleve moved in front of everyone, one hand holding the cloth at his front and the other wielding his yellow-red sword made from bastial steel.
Whoever it was threw open the door and jumped inside with his wand out. Cleve began to charge until he recognized Basen, who seemed scared yet perplexed, throwing up his arms as he slid along the wall to get away from Cleve.
“It’s just me,” he blurted.
“What are you doing here?” Cleve asked.
“I followed the trail of blood from Terren’s. Is everything all right?” He looked past Cleve and seemed even more confused.
“Everyone’s fine,” Terren said.
“Jack Rose is on his way to alert the guards,” Basen said. “Who’s that on the table?”
“I don’t know.” Terren sighed. “But the answer will tell us if war is beginning.”
Basen appeared to realize what Terren was saying and stepped forward wearing a stormy expression. “He’s the one who attacked you?”
“Yes, and now I’m going to have to wake up the school to gather everyone at Redfield.” Terren bit down on his thin lip and shook his head. “Never in the history of the Academy has that needed to be done in the middle of the night, but no one—not even instructors—are spending one more hour sleeping on their own. Cleve and Reela, you should get dressed.”
Terren left in a hurry, calling over his shoulder, “Someone will come for the body in time. Leave it for now.”
“Close the door, Basen,” Reela said. As soon as he did, she came toward him and leaned forward in a clear display of psyche. “What has Annah Varra been doing since she moved in with you?”
“And why do you even want her there?” Effie added.
“I don’t think she has any part of this,” he told Effie first, then turned to Reela. “Does this mean Terren has allowed her to move? My house was still empty when I left for Kyrro City this morning, and I went straight to Jack’s house when I returned. If she’s there, she’s probably in Nick’s old room, asleep.”
“Someone should check,” Effie said. “And they should hurry. Cleve, I’ve seen enough of your ass for one night. Put something on. Steffen, you’re already dressed. You go.”
He nodded and then jogged out the door.
“Reela, you should get dressed as well,” Effie suggested.
She and Cleve returned to the room they’d been sharing since Annah had moved in. Now that she was gone, Cleve hadn’t bothered to move his belongings out and wasn’t sure he wanted to, though it did seem strange to have an open room in their house.
He and Reela stayed quiet, and soon they could hear Effie’s voice from the front of the house.
“What are you doing?”
“Checking his body,” Basen replied.
“We already checked. There was nothing.”
“Are you crying?”
“Shut up.”
Cleve closed the door to their room. “Are you all right?” he asked Reela.
“I think I am.”
“Whatever’s happening, we can handle it.”
She nodded halfheartedly. “I wish my brother would return. I don’t know what he could be doing with the Krepps and the Elves all this time.”
“He said he would come back, so he will. Hopefully it will be soon.” He embraced her. “Whatever this is, it can’t be any worse than what we’ve overcome so far.”
“I don’t know, Cleve. Before, we’ve always had a sense of what was coming well in advance—the war against Tenred, the Krepps joining them. Except for when the traitors attacked, we knew when we would have to fight. But there’s something about this that makes me feel as if the ground is about to open beneath my feet…and it’s going to happen soon. I don’t think we’re looking at war. I think we’re looking at a surprise that’s going to change everything.”
Cleve wanted to tell her it was all in her imagination, but that wasn’t something he could do with a psychic. Everything he told Reela, he had to believe.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
When it came time for supper, Alabell decided she would first check on the akorell stone she’d wanted to look at since Basen had left at lunch. The day had been busier than usual since his departure, made even more chaotic by her distracted thoughts. Panic had been building inside of her. It felt like a storm was coming, causing her to constantly check the sky each time she was near a window. But the day remained cool and clear. So why did she have this feeling of foreboding?
Through her worry, the memory of Basen’s lips against her cheek sprung up throughout the day, speeding her pulse as if he was there in front of her. The feeling he evoked was a swell of heat that started in her chest and exploded across her entire body whenever he looked at her. She felt like a first-year student again, when she’d been overwhelmed by the number of handsome men at the Academy.
As the weeks had gone by, she’d come to realize that most of the warriors she met were more interested in her breasts than in her. While staring, these men offered nothing but flattery, often expressed crudely. However, three years was a long time to be among thousands of people her age, and she’d been involved with a few good-hearted men before her graduation. When the war began, however, there was no man that she had any stake in above friendship. She’d been in no mood for romance.
Basen had sparked something she’d been too busy to realize she’d been missing: the thrill of the chase, like a cat after string. The boy was two years her younger, yet he had a face that could lure a queen’s gaze, with his dark eyes that brought out his brilliantly white smile and his black hair that hung loosely, just long enough for her to feel on the back of her hand if she ran her fingers through it…slowly.
He wasn’t enormous and bulky, but tall and strapping. The way he carried himself gave a hint of his physical prowess, ready to fight but only if needed. She felt safe with him, protected, a feeling she’d begun to relish since the war, a feeling she wanted to spread to other
s whenever the opportunity arose.
She needed access to the locked room where the akorell stone was kept. There were few with the key, but James Kerr was one of them. She always used every excuse she could think of to see her great-uncle, and this was a great one. After asking a choice servant of the castle who Alabell knew would be privy to the king’s whereabouts, she found him and asked if she could check on the akorell stone.
“I’ll go with you,” he said, “and then we’ll have supper. How does that sound?”
A bubble of joy popped within her. “Perfect.”
During his first week on the throne, her great-uncle had reassigned the guards who usually followed the king everywhere he went in his own castle. This gave them privacy whenever he and Alabell met, and she enjoyed how knowledgeable and direct he was with her, no matter the subject.
As a councilman to the late king, Alabell’s great-uncle had always been addressed as Councilman Kerr, so people had taken to using his surname. No one had called him James, and now it seemed as if his first name no longer suited him.
“I hear many changes are beginning,” she said. “More focus on preventing rebellion than before.”
“Yes, that Hiller gentleman you introduced me to has brought up too many good points for me to ignore. I wish there was a way to trust all my people and, at the same time, take measures to prevent them from forming an army against us. But the two cannot coexist.”
“What kinds of measures are being taken?”
Kerr’s answer had to wait as he was approached by Liaison Wilfre with documents in hand. “I’m on my way to the Academy with your messages,” Wilfre said as he bowed. “The rankings of mages and warriors will be posted by the time I get there. I’ll bring back a copy for our records here at the castle.”
